


salvatore

by Aicosu



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort/Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Gingerose, Lore vomit, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, hux lives and is with the resistance, me writing weird crackship fluff and also spouting stupid niche imperial lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aicosu/pseuds/Aicosu
Summary: Rose Tico is wary of General Hux after the battle on Exegol.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 19
Kudos: 199





	salvatore

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by [@izam_w's gingerose art of Hux handing her his coat!](https://twitter.com/izam_w/status/1212456450586533888?s=20). Also by Lana Del Rey's song 'Salvatore.'
> 
> This ship is awesome, thank you guys for bringing it to my attention.

Hux is taller than she remembers. 

Or maybe he’s not. Rose wasn’t exactly in a good judgment of his height when she’d been kneeled at his boots, bit his fingers or pushed to the floor for execution. 

And it could be that he’s not but the star destroyers crumbled in the distant horizon of Exegol look like tiny toys from here.They're like miniatures in a holodrama or little graphic models of an aftermath of a mass battle between a fleet and a bombardment of resistance forces would look like. He stares at them intently. 

Or maybe it’s because Exegol is actually extremely cold and so she’s hunched with her arms crossed, staring at his supposed tallness with weariness and impatience. 

No one told her to watch their enemy-turned-spy-turned-ally. But she’s not sure many people even remember that he’s here. In fact, she hadn’t remembered, or even known that it had been _him_ , Hux, _the_ General Hux, until she’d seen him cross the dirt flats of Exegol’s cleanup operation as if in a trance.  
  
Trance was maybe the wrong word. 

He was still perfectly, insufferably, poised. Dressed fully and probably proudly, in his First Order regalia amidst the ragtag of white and orange pilots and rebel staff. Hands crossed at the wrists behind his back. 

But his face was funny. 

Upset. 

Angry. 

That’s maybe why she’d followed him. 

There’s not much _he could do_. At least that’s what she keeps telling herself, hands on her belt and holster as she keeps her distance but traces his path toward the growing pile of debris people have been collecting and sorting through. 

There’s nothing left for him to order or command. Nor is there any force to back him up if he tries to double-agent his situation so to speak. There’s nothing worth betraying his betrayal for at this point. 

Still, Hux passes piles and piles, not seemingly bothered by them or the winds of rainless-clouds Exegol maintains. 

It’s not until they get closer to the ruins of one of the destroyers that he slows. 

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting. A whipped out blaster and shouting maybe. But she doesn’t expect him to slowly take off his hat. 

To pull each finger of his gloves off, one by one.  
  
To watch him fold each piece regiment style and tuck them into his coat. 

To hold her breath as he slowly kneeled to the ground amidst the wreckage to pull a shiny piece of metal into his hands and stand once more. 

She tries to get a better look at it, whatever it is, stepping closer. 

Hux turns and sees her. 

She lets out the breath, shaky and fast, hands clutching her blaster handle at her hip. Hux’s eyes are the same nothing color of Exegol. They drop to her gun and back up. 

He looks casually back to the remnant in his hands. 

Rose tries to hold her composure, her spite, her ire of his mere identity, in order to bravely come forward and nod as nonchalantly as she can. “Intel?”  
  
She blames her trembling on the cold. 

Hux glances at her from the corner of his eyes and hisses a noise of distaste. But he hands her the thing.

“If you like.” He answers. His voice is sharp and cleanly clipped. Sarcastic.

It’s not heavy. It’s surprisingly light. Not metal but plasti. It’s dirty, scorched. And the engraved aurebesh is smoked down the face of it. Still, she can read some of what it says. 

“”Testing bracket”?” She reads out loud.   
  
Hux hums.  
  
“What, for soldier drills?” She asks and this time looks up. He's looking over her head, at the distant smoke billowing from the ship. She can sorta see the shadows of it in his eyes.   
  
“Students.” He answered. 

Her fingers slide over the plastipad, where slots for data chips would insert. Probably to hold different kinds of tests per different… student. 

“They’re outdated anyway. Most of the 3rd fleet’s upgrades included a move to oral dictation on a tri-field recorder. It made the classroom more efficient in time and the students not such gibberish speakers.”

She doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about.  
  
“But why is it here?”  
  
Hux is about to step away when he stops. Freezes. Exegol’s wind forces her hair in her face and it’s not until she pulls it from her eyes that he answers.  
  
“All of you truly have no ideas about anything, do you?”  
  
Rose grits her teeth, glaring instantly. She wants to yell at him, insult him, point out that they didn’t have to _know_ things to understand right from wrong.  
  
But his face his blank.  
  
Soft. He says it with no spit. No rise in hackles like she’d seen of him before.  
  
He says it like a quiet revelation. 

“Know what?” She asks instead. 

“It’s standard for every cruiser to carry a fourth of the feet’s academy, thus each fleet prepares the next. There were the S-Class models assigned to host it in entirety when they promote to senior and finish as a unit. But even those, like the Adjutant and the Finalizer, were active-duty cruisers. ”

It’s a very roundabout, careful, pointed and logical way to tell her that every star destroyer had kids on it. 

And she wants to say a lot of things. Wants to tell him how disgusting that was. How horrible. How awful that they carry hostages. How morally repugnant it was to try and use children as bullet proofing if that was their intention. Or how blood wouldn’t be on their hands like that if they didn’t _steal_ children in the first place. 

She stares at the testing bracket and feels all those things even if at the moment they don’t really matter. Not to whoever had this anyway. Not right now. 

Hux might have guessed anyway.  
  
“We had a planetside academy too, Arkanis, in the Outer Rim.” He said quietly. “Though by the Exaltation Decree that was technically illegal too.”  
  
Exaltation Decree stated that, after their fall above Endor, no planet or shore territory ever be inhabited by any Imperial loyalists or their descendants. Ever. The weren't allowed a home besides space.  
  
So. 

There was that. 

“Sorry,” Rose says. It’s instinctive. And it’s really stupid. And she’s not sure why she even had the urge to apologize to him, to the First Order, to Hux. Ever.  
  
He says nothing but he does look at her with a frown. As if he too didn’t like the fact that she had said it.  
  
They stare at each other for some time, frowning. 

Maybe both conflicted, or both upset. Angry. Sad? She’s not sure.

She’s just cold.  
  
“Bloody, rebel scum.”  
  
Well, now she's angry.  
  
“You know—! I was just—”  
  
“So ill-prepared.” But Hux’s distaste confuses her when he continues, shoulders relaxing to slip his overcoat off with a snap. “All that fighting spirit and grotesque persistence against well-groomed and bred enemies and yet no hindsight to bring coats to frigid atmospheres."

It whips past her head and around her shoulders, a wreath of black heat warming her from the inside out.

Her cheeks get hot too. 

Hux sighs, flicking imaginary dust from the collar as he pulls it up to her face.

She makes a point not to say thank you, and Hux doesn’t say she’s welcome either. 

Instead, he simply puts his hands behind his back again. Without the coat he looks thin. Sharper. Like an unsheathed razor blade, easy to snap but still dangerous. 

He keeps walking.

He’s slower though and his shoulders are half turned as if to consider her so she follows along. 

The coat is heavier than she thought. Insulated and reinforced in the seams with metal and straps. It's padded on her heart where his gloves and hat lay thickly folded. 

It drags on the ground, fine black garbardine getting dirty with Exegol's dust and ghosts.

He’s much taller than she remembered after all. 

But it’s warm.


End file.
